Blue Origin Pauses Space Tourism to Focus on the Moon

NASA had an agreement with SpaceX to provide the lunar lander. However, then-acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy reopened the mission to competition.

A Blue Origin New Shepard rocket lifts off with a crew of six from Launch Site One in west Texas, on Dec. 11, 2021. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

Blue Origin decided to shift its focus from the edge of space to the Moon.

The company announced on Jan. 30 that it was pausing all of its suborbital commercial flights on its reusable New Shepard rocket for no less than two years in order to focus more resources on delivering a crewed lunar lander to NASA in time to meet Congress’s set deadline to establish a permanent human presence on or around the moon by 2030.